talk a lot transcription of an online lesson on sentence stress

Talk a Lot Focus on Connected Speech Transcription of an Online Talk a Lot Lesson on Sentence Stress= Talk a Lot Elementary Book 3 – Unit 5: Airport Introduction What follows is a comp

Talk a Lot

Focus on Connected Speech

Transcription of an Online Talk a Lot Lesson on Sentence Stress=

Talk a Lot Elementary Book 3 – Unit 5: Airport

Introduction

What follows is a complete transcription of a free

online lesson that was delivered by Talk a Lot author

Matt Purland on Thursday 24 th September 2009 at

1pm CET He used the online teaching platform

provided by http://www.edufire.com to deliver the

lesson, which lasted about fifty minutes and was

attended by eleven students, including Angela,

Luba, and others who are mentioned below

The lesson was interactive because the students

were able to type answers to Matt’s questions in a

chat box that everybody could see on the screen

They were able to see Matt talking live on the

screen, and get answers to their questions As well

as the live video of the teacher on the screen, the

students could follow a Powerpoint presentation,

which included material used during the lesson The

still shot from the lesson in progress (right) gives an

example of what the participants could see

The lesson was recorded and later distributed as an episode of the English Banana.com Podcast You can download the mp3 file and listen to this lesson in full by clicking this link:

http://www.englishbanana.com/podcasts/talk-a-lot-lesson-21-sentence-stress-airport.mp3

You can download the full Powerpoint presentation of the lesson here:

http://www.englishbanana.com/sentence-stress-airport.ppt

Transcription

[Podcast introduction] Hello My name is Matt Purland I’m an English teacher living and working in Poland This is a recording of a free lesson that I delivered recently on

www.edufire.com We’re using material from the Talk a Lot free spoken English course, which

is available to download free from http://www.englishbanana.com/talkalot/ If you’d like to attend the next Talk a Lot lesson please visit http://www.edufire.com/englishbanana/ to find out the date and time And I hope you’ll be able to join us then

Let’s start our lesson today We’re looking at sentence stress And the topic we’re looking at

is Airport, which is one of the topics in Talk a Lot Book 3 It’s the latest one that’s being written

at the moment What does it mean sentence stress? Sentence stress Anybody? Type in the box if you know What is sentence stress? Do you know? Or what is a sentence? Let’s start with that So type in the box if you know So a sentence is a group of words For example, let’s start with this example

“My name is Matt.”

“My name is Matt.” This is a sentence It’s a short sentence Sentence stress is about which words in a sentence have stress; are said more strongly or louder than other words So, in this sentence which words do you think are more important than the others? Which words are more important? So, Luba’s saying “name” and “Matt” So in this sentence I would stress

Talk a Lot

Focus on Connected Speech

Transcription of an Online Talk a Lot Lesson on Sentence Stress=

Talk a Lot Elementary Book 3 – Unit 5: Airport

“name” and “Matt” These are words which we call content words They have some meaning

Or a dictionary meaning I wouldn’t say for example:

“My Name Is Matt.”

That’s everything stressed the same But I would say, “My name is Matt.” Or even with

contraction: “My name’s Matt” OK Let’s start at the beginning with this then We’re going to

look at content words Content words are words in the sentence that have meaning; that have their own meaning in the dictionary For example, if I said to you “name”, then you’d know what it means “Name.” So content words are things like nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, numbers, words that have meaning on their own outside the sentence

Type in the box please, for example, some nouns What does it mean noun? Type in the box just for example, any nouns “Tree” OK “Sound” “Mic”, or “microphone” “Car” “Computer”

“Water” So these are nouns Things we can either see or can’t see, such as abstract nouns, like “peace” or “sound”, is something we can’t see “Freedom” Good example So nouns are things that we can either see or touch, or maybe things that are just abstract OK Like for example “freedom”

Next one Verbs Type in the box some examples of verbs Any verbs “Speak”, “go”, “love”,

“study”, OK Any more? So, we’re talking about main verbs The main action in the sentence These are content words Nouns, main verbs, such as the ones we’ve just heard

Adjectives What about adjectives? What are they? Adjectives “Beautiful”, says Luba,

“green”, “nice”, “slow”, “new”, very good “Lovely” So, what do adjectives describe? What do they describe? Adjectives describe nouns Very good, Ed Thank you Nouns, main verbs, adjectives These are content words Words which have a meaning in the dictionary, and a meaning apart from the sentence

What about then adverbs? Adverbs Can you think of any examples of adverbs? “Slowly”,

“well”, “fastly”? No, we can’t say “fastly” “Fast” is better “Nicely” Ed’s saying anything with

“-ly” suffix Yeah “Quick” can be adverb; “quickly” as well, “slowly” OK So what does an adverb describe? An adverb describes the verb So, how we’re doing something How we’re doing it An adjective describes the noun The things And adverbs describe the verbs OK Numbers as well, I think we know what they are I don’t need to say that One, two, three, for example Words that have a meaning on their own outside of a sentence OK Content words The other words we’re looking at are function words Function words Any examples? Maybe you already know about this Function words So, for example, prepositions, articles, auxiliary verbs, and verb “to be” – these are function words Type in the box for me some examples of prepositions, just for example Just for example Prepositions So, “on”, “at”, “from”, “under”; they’re describing where something is – the place or the time, maybe something like that Articles What are articles? Articles, for example, “the”, “a”, and “an” So we’ve only got three articles in English, thank goodness Articles Determiners For example, “some”, “many” – determiners What does it mean auxiliary verbs? Auxiliary verbs? “Do”, “be”, “have” OK, these are good auxiliary verbs Good examples “Should” – so modal verbs as well “Can”,

“might”, “could”, “must”, but what’s the difference between auxiliary verbs and main verbs? [Pause.] Auxiliary verbs don’t mean what they usually mean, Luba They don’t mean What do

Talk a Lot

Focus on Connected Speech

Transcription of an Online Talk a Lot Lesson on Sentence Stress=

Talk a Lot Elementary Book 3 – Unit 5: Airport they mean then? So what do they mean? [Pause.] Modal verbs are auxiliary Oh, auxiliary means helping, doesn’t it, helping It’s sort of assisting Helping verbs They help other verbs

to make the tenses To make the tenses So if you making a tense with a sentence with present continuous you need to use “be” as auxiliary verb, like: “I am talking to you now” “I’m talking” “Be” is an auxiliary verb Doesn’t have any meaning in the sentence It doesn’t have any meaning, but it’s just there to make the grammar Just to make the grammar OK, and the main ones are: “be”, “have”, “do”, and then the modal verbs as well OK

Also function words, things like… verb “to be” – it’s never stressed either, so we can include verb “to be” – even when it’s a main verb we can use it as a function word So, really this is the main point This is the main point of the lesson And in fact it’s the most important point of any lesson to do with spoken English that I’ve ever taught, because it’s the most critical thing

to know, the difference between content words and function words If we’re just using all words together with the same level of stress, then our English will stay very strange, very static, very foreign We need to know in a sentence which words are content words and which are function words You can do this with any sentence Find a sentence in English, look at it, and underline the content words Nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverbs, numbers, and any word that has a meaning apart from the sentence Away from the sentence And function words are the little words, the short words: prepositions, articles, determiners, auxiliary verbs, and verb “to be” These are words that are contracted and squeezed together OK So this is the introduction to the lesson Let’s look at the Powerpoint together This comes from the title

of the Talk a Lot Handbook, which you can download from http://www.englishbanana.com

“Success in spoken English lies in stress and vowel sounds.” Stress and vowel sounds OK?

“Specifically, getting the correct vowel sounds on the correct stressed syllables in a sentence, and then joining them together.”

So this is what we learn to do on Talk a Lot courses And also through the Handbook, it gives you a lot of practice for doing this The first thing we need to do in a sentence is identify, is find, content words and function words OK After we’ve done that we can look for the stress – the stressed syllable – in each content word And after that look for the vowel sound If we know that, then our pronunciation will really improve And will be much clearer If we don’t know that, then our pronunciation and stress can be very mixed, and quite difficult to

understand Let’s look at another extract from the book, Talk a Lot Handbook:

“There are two kinds of word in most sentences: content words and function

words Content words are words that give the meaning in a sentence, such as nouns

(e.g bread), main verbs (e.g eat; note: “be” is an exception because it is a main verb, but is always unstressed), phrasal verbs (e.g put on), adjectives (e.g sliced), adverbs

(e.g quickly), numbers, wh- question words (e.g what), and negative auxiliary verbs

(e.g isn’t) Function words are words that are essential to make the sentence grammatically correct, but that don’t have any intrinsic meaning on their own, i.e without content words

They are words such as pronouns (e.g she, them), auxiliary verbs (e.g “are” in “They are going…”), prepositions (e.g in, on), articles and determiners (e.g a, the, some),

conjunctions (e.g and), quantifiers (e.g many), and the verb “be” when used as a main verb.”

So, these are the little words that fall in between the content words These are the words that cause all the problems with grammar With tenses And really make things difficult for

Talk a Lot

Focus on Connected Speech

Transcription of an Online Talk a Lot Lesson on Sentence Stress=

Talk a Lot Elementary Book 3 – Unit 5: Airport students of English If we just had content words I think your life would be easier in the

English class OK, so let’s continue then

“The strong stresses fall on the content words in a sentence while the weak stresses fall on the function words.”

OK Sometimes we stress a function word if we want to stress something particular, so

intonation means that I want to focus on something particular in the sentence [But] I’m talking about everyday, normal stress without particular intonation

I’ll have a deep breath there! Let’s continue then with the sentence from Airport Airport This

is going to be the new topic from Talk a Lot, available next month I would imagine These are sentence block sentences, so you can also use them to make sentence blocks, if you know how to do that

“Graham flies about three or four times a year.”

If you’re using this as a sentence block, I think you could use maybe “How many?” “How many times does Graham fly…?” for example Let’s look at this sentence This is a normal sentence isn’t it? What tense is it, this sentence? What is the tense here? “Graham flies about three or four times a year” Present tense OK, but which one? Present what? Present

continuous? [Pause.] Present simple Thanks, Gruba, for helping us So, present simple Graham flies… Listen to how I say it And I will speak quickly, how I would normally speak to

an English speaker: (rapid speech) “Graham flies…”

Can you hear how some of the words are stronger or louder than the others? Some of the words are stressed Yeah, Hassan can Looking at the sentence then we have to break down, try and imagine it in two groups: words which have stress – words which are content words – and words that are function words OK When you look at the sentence, try to imagine content words being bold, like black letters Just try to imagine that now Which words then are

content words? “Graham” “Flies” “Three” “Four” “Times” “Year” OK “Graham” “Flies”

“Three” “Four” “Times” “Year” These are the content words So which are the function words? Function words “About.” So, preposition “Or”, the conjunction And also “a” – article

So, “About.” “Or.” “A.” If I read you the sentence without these function words, can you still understand me?

“Graham flies three four times year.”

Can you understand the meaning of the sentence? Yes, Luba can Ed can OK So these are the most important words in the sentence These have meaning These carry the meaning of the sentence “Graham flies three four times year” These are the words we want to hear in the sentence: nouns, main verbs, numbers, adjectives, adverbs, you know, this kind of thing Let’s look at the words that we missed out Function words “About”, “or”, “a” If I said to you,

“Hey, Angela, about or a!” Do you understand me, what I mean? [Pause.] Yes? So, some confusion here [Pause.] No Exactly So, if I just said to you: “About or a”, it’s not a sentence, because there’s no meaning There are no words that have any meaning in this sentence It’s just function words OK Good, Angela So, there’s no verb We always have to have a verb in

an English sentence There’s no noun There’s nothing There’s no meaning Good So,

Talk a Lot

Focus on Connected Speech

Transcription of an Online Talk a Lot Lesson on Sentence Stress=

Talk a Lot Elementary Book 3 – Unit 5: Airport

“Graham flies three four times year” These words have meaning, and so the content words are stressed in the sentence The content words are stressed, and the function words are not stressed

What does it mean… what does it mean then? [Pause.] I have to look for the stress in each content word The stressed syllable If the word has more than one syllable, I need to find which one is stressed So, Graham Graham Graham How many syllables are there?

Graham Two syllables, thank you Cristina So, Graham Which one is stressed Which one is

louder than the other? Graham Graham DUH-duh So, I’m stressing the first Very good

everybody I’m stressing the first syllable It’s something like this: big O, small o [The stress

pattern in the word Graham = Oo.] If I want to show it like that Graham DUH-duh DUH-duh

“Graham flies three four times year” OK The rest of this is quite simple because all the other words – content words – have only one syllable So the stress is on the whole syllable

“Graham flies about three or four times a year”

It’s not about saying it quickly, and speaking quickly, it’s not really Although you can speak

quickly if you want to It’s about stressing the right syllables Stressing the right syllables That means not stressing function words, articles, prepositions, but stressing nouns, verbs, and so

on Content words And if you’ve got a word that’s longer than one syllable, looking for the

stressed syllable Graham I don’t say Gra-HAM, Gra-HAM, Gra-HAM “Gra-HAM flies ” No

Not Gra-HAM flies, but GRA-ham So, it’s the name of somebody It’s somebody’s name, Charles Graham It’s a male person It’s a man I can’t say Gra-HAM Gra-HAM! “Gra-HAM flies…” No Because the accent is on the first syllable OK So if I get the wrong syllable for the accent, or stress, it makes it harder to understand me If I’m telling you, “HAM Gra-HAM flies…” What? What did you say? What did you say? “Gra-Gra-HAM?” What, “grey”, as in

the colour? “Ham”, as in the meat? What do you mean? Accent is so important in English It’s

so important And it leads to a lot of confusion, if we’re using the wrong stress, or the wrong

accent

You can find out where the strong stress is in every word by checking in your dictionary, and it will show you the phonetic spelling, and which syllable is stressed So, GRA-ham GRA-ham

OK “Graham flies about three or four times a year” The other words in the sentence – the other words, that’s the function words – I have to say more quickly I have to say more

quickly, or more quietly, with less stress I have to make a contrast between them You know, three or four, three a four “A” I’m only saying “a” I’m not pronouncing “orrrr” “Three orrrr four times aaaa year” No “Three a four”; “three a four”; “three a four times a year” “A year” “A year” Very quickly with the function words “Graham flies about three a four… three a four… three a four…” “A” I’m using the weak stress schwa sound for “or” It’s the weak form of the word If you look in the Talk a Lot Handbook you will see a long list of weak forms I can do this, not because I’m an English teacher (that I’m allowed), but I can do it because these words are not stressed They’re function words I have to squeeze them together I can’t get rid of them I can’t delete them, and just say, “Graham flies three four times year” I can’t really delete them, because then it would be a mistake It would be an error But, I can reduce them… is the word Reduce Make them shorter Make them quicker So they don’t stand out

“Three or four times a year” “Three or four times a year” “Three a four” “Three a four”

“Three a four”

Reduce, reduce, reduce That’s what you should do with function words in a sentence Try with your own sentences Say them more quickly; but it’s fine to do it when you’re speaking in

Talk a Lot

Focus on Connected Speech

Transcription of an Online Talk a Lot Lesson on Sentence Stress=

Talk a Lot Elementary Book 3 – Unit 5: Airport English because they’re not stressed, and they shouldn’t have stress “Three Or Four

Times…” No “Three a four times a year” Can you hear the rhythm? “Three a four” Imagine like the mountain range Up, down, up, down, up, down English goes up and down Du dUH,

Du dUH, Du dUH Let’s think of a good example for that For example, this sentence Let’s try saying this Try saying it to yourself:

“I’d like to eat a plate of sweets.”

Du dUH, Du dUH, Du dUH, Du dUH OK So there’s some similarities in Spanish, Angela’s saying here “I’d like to eat a plate of sweets.” Du dUH, Du dUH, Du dUH, Du dUH What’s the main verb here? What’s the main verb? Eat OK, and also…? So we’ve got two Two verbs Two main verbs “Like” and “eat” Which are the nouns? Type in the box “Plate” Good, Hassan, and “sweets” OK So all the other words are not stressed Look at the sentence and try… and in your mind make the words, the main content words, in bold, if you like So, we’ve got “like, eat, plate, sweets” If I just said this to you, you could probably understand me, what

I meant, right? “Like, eat, plate, sweets” Maybe you don’t know who, because there’s no pronoun, and there’s no person But this demonstrates the rhythm of English, and how the

function words can fall into the holes, into the gaps between the content words “I’d like to eat

a plate of sweets.” Du dUH, Du dUH, Du dUH, Du dUH And of course, it doesn’t always

sound like that, exactly Because we’ve got many combinations of words and syllables But this is for example OK So, if you are just saying: “I’d Like To Eat A Plate Of Sweets Teacher! I’d Like To Eat A Plate Of Sweets” “Would You? O K Then Here You Are Then” It’s not English It’s not English, because there’s no rhythm and there’s no sentence stress – that’s why I said earlier, the most important lesson you can learn from this is how to separate content and function words, and notice then that content words have stress

Function words don’t OK So, that’s another example

“Graham flies about three or four times a year.”

Let’s continue a little bit more with Graham, and then we’ll take some questions towards the end Now you can see in this sentence, the content words are bold “Graham flies about three

or four times a year” I’m not saying it particularly fast I’m not speaking quickly, but I’m

stressing the right words, the right syllables I’m not saying “Gra-HAM” “Gra-HAM flies…”

because it’s the wrong stress “Graham” “Graham flies…” “Graham flies about three or four

times a year” So I’ve identified the stresses

“Graham flies about three or four times a year.”

It’s maybe not the best example, because all the other words are one syllable But you can

see here some other examples [On the Powerpoint presentation students could read the

other sentence block starting sentences from the Airport unit.] Underline the stressed syllable

Let’s look at the second example Number two So you’ve got the words which are content words in bold The function words are grey The stress in each content word is underlined:

“Keith is flying economy class today, becausehe can’t afford an upgrade.”

And this is standard in all Talk a Lot materials You could download any unit from Book 3 and you will see this So the stressed syllables here: “Keith”, “fly”, “con”, “class”, “day”, “can’t”,

“fford”, “up” If you’re getting this right, if you’re getting the stressed syllables right, your

Talk a Lot

Focus on Connected Speech

Transcription of an Online Talk a Lot Lesson on Sentence Stress=

Talk a Lot Elementary Book 3 – Unit 5: Airport pronunciation will be good, and the person listening will understand you If you’re getting some of these stresses wrong, like here, “e-con-O-my class…” What? I didn’t hear the right stress So you put up a barrier between me and you “e-con-O-my”? No, “e-CON-o-my”

“Economy class” Oh, right Economy class So you have to underline the stress and use the correct stress “Flying” “Flying” It has to be the first syllable, because “-ing” is never stressed

It’s a suffix, and these are never stressed We go into detail in the handbook about this

“Flying” “Playing” “Looking” “Seeing” “Reading” “Going” It’s always going to be stressed

on the first syllable I can’t saying “fly-ING” “-ing” is a suffix and it’s not stressed

“e-CON-o-my class” “Today” “Today” Not “TO-day” “TO-day, teacher!” No “T” [pronounced like the

consonant sound LíL ] “T” Even without a vowel sound The function words can be reduced

We can reduce them “T-day” “Because he can’t afford an upgrade” “An up-GRADE”? No

“UP-grade” “UP-grade” is correct, in the same way that “GRA-ham” is correct, or

“e-CON-o-my class” is correct “e-con-O-“e-CON-o-my”? No, it’s not “e-con-O-“e-CON-o-my”, for example “e-CON-o-“e-CON-o-my” It’s four syllables You’ve got a one in four chance of getting it right, if you don’t know the stress But when you’re learning the word, learn the stress as well Don’t just guess it Look in your dictionary, see the phonetic spelling and which syllable is stressed It’ll be marked with the little mark that looks like an apostrophe I can’t show you here, because we haven’t the

phonetic symbols, but “e-CON…” “e-CON…” The “con” will have the little mark in front of it, like an apostrophe “e-CON-o-my”

The ultimate goal here is to look at the sentence and identify the vowel sounds That’s why I’m talking about vowel sounds Each stressed syllable has a vowel sound The stress is on the vowel sound:

===LÉfL========L~fL=================LáWL=======LlWL=L~fL==========Lf]L=

Graham flies about three or four times a year

==LáWL=======L~fL========LflL===========L^WL=======L~fL=========================L^WL=======LlWL=======L¾L==

Keith is flying economy class today, because he can’t afford an upgrade

“GRA-ham” “Gray” “Ay” “Graham” If I get confused and say “GRA ” [as in the short vowel

sound LôL ] “GRA-ham” Then what? I don’t understand you It’s a barrier between us

“GRA-ham”? No, the correct vowel sound is “ay” So it must be “GRA-ham” [the diphthong

sound LÉfL=] “Keith is flying” “Flying” “I” “I” [the diphthong L~fL=] And you can see here the

phonetic symbols “I” If you said “Keith is fleeing”, “fleeing”, then it’s a different verb The verb

“to flee”, and it means running away So, straight away we’ve got confusion if you don’t know the vowel sound You should learn for every content word the stressed syllable and the vowel sound I can’t stress it enough! “Keith is flying economy” “Economy” Probably you will guess

the “o” sound [the short vowel sound LflL] because of the spelling “Economy class today”

“Today” “To die”? “To die”? It’s a different verb in English – “to die” – isn’t it? It means to stop

living “To die”? No “Today” “Today” It doesn’t matter about the “t” because there isn’t a vowel sound at all, because it’s not stressed, it’s weak form, it’s functional “T” [The

consonant sound LíL] “Today” But “day” has to be the “ay” sound “Day” has to be the “ay”

sound “Because he can’t afford an upgrade” “UP-grade” “OOP-grade”? “OOP”? “OOP”?

Like “book”? [The short vowel sound LrL] No “Up” “Up” Like “uh”, the sound in the phonetic alphabet that is “uh” [The short vowel sound L¾L]

Talk a Lot

Focus on Connected Speech

Transcription of an Online Talk a Lot Lesson on Sentence Stress=

Talk a Lot Elementary Book 3 – Unit 5: Airport That’s why we said at the beginning of the lesson, “success in spoken English lies in stress and vowel sounds Specifically getting the correct vowel sounds on the correct stressed syllables in the sentence.” Practise on your own, or with a friend, or with your teacher Take any English sentence Separate it into content words and function words, and then look for the stress on the content words – which syllable is stressed? Only one per word Only one has the strong stress Then think about what is the vowel sound Try to learn the phonetic alphabet It will take you maybe one week, if you’re using flashcards, but after that it’ll be useful every day for a lifetime So you have to learn that Think about what is the vowel

sound, and then practise it And then all the other syllables in between can be squeezed together Just squeeze them; reduce them as far as possible, and then you’ll be stressing the correct things, and your pronunciation will improve This is really an introduction, and after this there’s nothing more to do than simply practise it and try it

[Podcast ending] Thanks for joining us today To download more free lessons, and all of the Talk a Lot materials absolutely free of charge, please visit:

http://www.englishbanana.com/talkalot/